---
title: “I can’t walk, but I can ROLL,” answered the rock. — The Brown Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “I can’t walk, but I can ROLL,” answered the rock. Who acts: rock. A sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 16, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Brown Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, part 16, sentence 67

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“I can’t walk, but I can ROLL,” answered the rock.

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**Who acts:** rock · **What happens:** not walk, roll, answer · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 16. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (rock), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Parsed by Mova, not checked by a teacher.** This tree is Mova's own parse (the `en` model, on the CPU, when the site is built); it may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg3282:16:67
# text = “I can’t walk, but I can ROLL,” answered the rock.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
3	ca	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
5	walk	walk	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	13	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
7	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
8	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
9	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	10	aux	_	_
10	ROLL	roll	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
13	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	rock	rock	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	13	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **walk** *in a quote* | can | the rock *= rock* |  |  |  |  |  | vn run-51.3.2-2-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **roll** *in a quote* | can | the rock *= rock* |  |  |  |  |  | vn run-51.3.2-2 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **answer** *speech: assert* | past | the rock |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

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One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.

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**Text:** «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3282 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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